Please spay and neuter your pets! While your newborn pets are cute, failing to do this allows your little darlings to add to the population of homeless animals. Adopt pets from your local animal rescues/shelters, there are plenty of animals just waiting for a home.

I really hope your cat grows up to look like my cat Cheerio. He was the runt of the litter and his mom abandoned him, which is why he is so small. He started out with the same colouring as Cactus Jack, but it eventually darkened to what it is now.

You're a hero!
I saved a little bird during rainy night. I was coming back from work at around 11pm and when i was walking out of my car and into my house i somehow saw amidst the darkness a little cold wet bird in the side of the street. I felt so bad! He looked so cold and didn't move an inch even when i got really near him. I decided to grab a cardboard and kind of push him on it, i couldn't i had my mom help me on that lol im a bit squeamish. I put him behind a flower pot, under some cover from the rain also, and huffed warm air to him for a while. The i grabbed some newspaper for some more cover. Woke up the next day and realized it was gone. Then i go to my car and see a bird right infront of my window looking at me and around! I'm not sure if it was the same bird, it couldn't fly, but i was surprised that it wouldn't move, even after turning on the windshield wipers!

Aww that is so sweet. I found my Luna outside of my boyfriend's house in his backyard. She was hiding in an overturned, empty trash can. When I took her inside, she immediately hid her face in my neck. Here is a photo the night I found her. For a while she would sleep very close to us, like stretched out on my neck. Now she doesn't (about a year old.) She sleeps BY me, but not on me anymore. Kinda sad. :/

Also, I just looked at your photos on my desktop. I was on my phone previously when I asked questions and couldn't see captions so I apologize for that! He is so truly beautiful! He is going to be a little loving baby. What a trooper!

Judging from my experience with my foster car giving birth, they seem very stressed and anxious and confused. I kinda feel bad for momma kitty :( terrible, terrible situation. Luckily there are good people in this world like OP and this little guy has a chance!

I can't upvote this enough. It reminds me so much of my late kitty "Pippie" that I rescued off the streets of Taipei while living there. She was tiny, bloated with worms, eyes glued shut with grease, dirt and scabs. The vet said she would have died if we hadn't found her and she would have been blind even if she had survived. I'd like to share with you a memorial I made of her, as she was killed by wild dogs in our yard late last year.

What made me really happy was how you took him to the vet even though you thought there was probably no hope... and that you kept taking care of him even when there was only a glimmer of hope. Clearly the right person found this little guy. Good for you.

I'm pretty sure the only reason why my cat sits on me purring in the morning is because her stomach is empty and in extreme pain. Same with when I come home and she's rolling on the floor purring. "My stomach!!! It burns!! Why do you deny me an overflowing bowl even though it's still full of food now? It's at least 10 hours old, and you expect me to eat that?"

it's understandable that you're upset by this, but you found them a home, it sounds like a caring attentive home, that's better than some have managed.
Keep your chin up, smile, know they're happy.
you've done well

I can't figure out why she would choose to have her babies in the middle of a cactus patch. Cats are usually pretty good about finding places to nest. Plus, I'm still upset that the others didn't make it. (✖╭╮✖)

From my experience, cats are often very dumb about finding good places to nest. I grew up on a farm and once our Mama cat (we had one Mama at any given time and spayed/neutered the rest) had the kittens between the walls in the barn. She couldn't get down there to nurse them after she'd had them, so we ended up using a straw hook that my father put styrofoam around and basically fished the kittens out when they were just days old.

Another Mama had hers up in the corner of the trusses of the barn.

Another had hers under the cattle feeder, so that as soon as they could move, they ran the risk of immediately being trampled (that one was maybe the worst, because she'd move them BACK THERE after we'd get them out and clean the manure off of them).

We usually had two litters every year, and I can't think of a single time that any Mama had her kittens in a safe, secure, warm place.

My childhood cat decided that the foot of my parents' bed, beneath the sheets, was a good place to have her kittens. While my parents were sleeping in the bed. Which was technically a pretty safe place, but also kind of a shock to my mom, who woke up to… fluids.

Some cats totally lack the mothering instinct. When we were young, my younger brother's cat was the runt of the litter, always relatively dim-witted, and likely gave herself brain damage. We would often find her running up and down the linoleum-tiled hallway, stopping a few feet from the bedroom door at one end, sliding into it, hitting the door with her head, then turning around and doing it again. We'd have to shut her up in one of the bedrooms otherwise she would do this repeatedly.

She had two litters of a total of 7 kittens, only one of which survived--she would not feed them or care for them, and often suffocated them by laying on top of them. We would try to intervene and bottle feed the kittens and keep them away from her, but braindamaged as she was, she'd always find them and bring them back to her "nest". After the second litter, we got her fixed as it was apparent that she was incapable of caring for her own young.

Aww! This has been said before in this post, but you really are a hero!

I saved a kitten (kind of a teenager) two months ago from the dump in my area. I was throwing trash away and it walked up to me a little, so I took my subway sandwich I just bought and gave him some, he ended up eating most of it! He let me pet him and pick him up. At first he was skittish but he calmed down in my arms and I just knew I had to take him home. He was very skinny and had mites but now he's healthy, I took him to the vet to get him checked out and he got fixed. He was so calm in the cat carrier at the vet, he actually started playing with my fingers through the bars!

Now he's 100% healthy, and he cuddles next to me every night like a teddy bear and plays outside all day. I named him Sid.

It's sad, people dump there cats at the dump around here! There's lots of them there, most have diseases. I think my cat probably wasn't there long enough to contract anything serious.

I am very glad to see this little kitten doing well! Please keep us updated about little Cactus Jack!

There's just something so adorable and cute about kittens and puppies that are extremely attached to their owners for me. They're cute enough as they are, but when you can tell they LOVE their owners and are so dependent on them, it's the cutest thing in the world to me.

What I really like is how this is not just a "fresh" picture of the kitten when you first found it. It gives the post more substance and integrity seeing photos over a period of time, and really shows everyone you're not a karma whore. Nice job saving the kitten, hopefully he gives you many years of mischief!

The cactus patch is huge, but all of the cacti have very tiny needles. There is very little room for kittens to crawl around underneath. It was impossible for us to reach in without tearing ourselves up on the needles. On top of that, the mother cat would attack us if we got close. So basically, he was crawling around under the cactus just gathering needles for the first 3 weeks of his life.

The night we finally got him out, he was blindly dragging himself along the top of a cactus looking for his mom. We plucked him and ran before mom tore us a new butthole.

He was covered in abscesses, fleas, and thousands of cactus needles. We took him to the emergency vet and they kept him overnight to give him antibiotics and to try to clean him up a bit.

This is adorable! Reminded me of a cat I saved from the street. Some kids has staples his nose, and he scratched at one of his eyes on accident trying to take the staple out. He was the same size as ur cactus jack- funny thing is we named our cat Jack too! We called ours jack cuZ he lost one eye and it reminded me of jack sparrow the pirate...honestly he was the best cat I have ever had. He's since passed due to other complications- but we had him for 2 amazing years. I wish u the best of luck and this is such a wonderful thing u did. Cactus Jack is adorable and very lucky to have u.

Thank you for rescuing Jack! I recently saved a feral mother and her kittens (4) from my backyard (she gave birth back there). The mom was a kitten herself and so skinny, I couldnt abandon her. The first time she let me pet her I cried because she was nothing but skin and bones. 2 months later (and a lot of patience) the mom and her kittens are doing wonderfully and are the sweetest little things. I'm hoping to find the kittens a forever home in the next week and hopefully adopt the mommy myself. She deserves a home.

He had some deep ulcers in both eyes when he first opened them, and the vet gave us some Tobramycin drops to give him. The ulcers cleared up, but he has some visible permanent eye damage in the left eye (He has a milky scar near the edge of his eye).

It doesn't seem to bother one bit, outside of messing with his depth perception a little. He still races around at full speed and plays like any other kitten.

oh my goodness the onions.. i want to squeeze that kitty and give it some love. snuggle for me! you're a very good person for taking care when most people would have looked at its odds and decided not to

Glad that you saved him. Poor little guy. Did he at least tolerate getting the crust off of his eyes? My dog hates eye-crust removal, but I catch it early so it doesn't get ridiculous like I see on some dogs.

We used Vetericyn Ophthalmic Gel. You just put a bit on and that's it. No rinsing or rubbing. It took a few days, but it was relatively painless for him. We didn't want to rub or anything because we didn't know if he had needles in his eyes or not.

Great story! I had a cat that was chased into jumping cholla near my house in Arizona. He barely survived. I also currently have a cat who I rescued from the side of the road after being hit from a car (he is blind in the left eye).

I salute you for being such a stand-up guy and taking care of this poor little kitty. Your rock!

This reminds me of when my best friend and I found a kitten trapped in a storm drain. It took fucking forever, a shit ton of weird stares, and almost dislocating my shoulder to pull the poor little guy out. He was scared, malnourished, and ridden with fleas. I wasn't able to keep him since I already had five other rescue cats of my own at home. I begged for my friend to keep him since I didn't want to take the little guy to a shelter in fear that they would just put him down. Five years later, my best friend has turned Rue into a fat spoiled cat.